Most inflectional irregularities arise as a result of series of fairly uniform historical changes so forms that appear to be irregular from a synchronic (contemporary) point of view may be seen as following more regular patterns when the verbs are analyzed from a diachronic ( historical linguistic) viewpoint. If some conjugational paradigm in a language is followed by a limited number of verbs, or it requires the specification of more than one principal part (as with the German strong verbs), views may differ as to whether the verbs in question should be considered irregular. The classification of verbs as regular or irregular is to some extent a subjective matter. On the other hand, verbs such as drink, hit and have are irregular since some of their parts are not made according to the typical pattern: drank and drunk (not 'drinked') hit (as past tense and past participle, not 'hitted') and has and had (not 'haves' and 'haved').

In English, for example, verbs such as play, enter, and like are regular since they form their inflected parts by adding the typical endings -s, -ing and -ed to give forms such as plays, entering, and liked.

This is one instance of the distinction between regular and irregular inflection, which can also apply to other word classes, such as nouns and adjectives. A verb whose conjugation follows a different pattern is called an irregular verb.

For specially constructed 'irregular verbs' that satirize uncharitably towards others, see Emotive conjugation.Ī regular verb is any verb whose conjugation follows the typical pattern, or one of the typical patterns, of the language to which it belongs.

What are irregular verbs